Medicine
terrasig | January 28, 2008If you read nothing else: Men with prostate cancer should avoid any dietary supplement containing testosterone (or anything that sounds like it) or that offers claims of increased virility, sexual performance, or increased muscle mass.
Consumption of a herbal/hormone dietary supplement has been linked to two cases of aggressive prostate cancer as reported in a paper in the 15 January issue of Clinical Cancer Research (abstract free; full paper paywalled) . The observations and follow-up studies were conducted by urologists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and Baylor…
oracknows | January 28, 2008Pity poor David Kirby.
Nearly three years ago now, he published his now-infamous Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Mystery. Hooking up with the most vocal of the mercury militia, his book blamed mercury in vaccines as the major cause of autism. Unfortunately for Kirby, time has not been kind to him. Although he still manages to retain his rock star status among the antivaccination glitterati, each successive study failing to find a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) and autism put another nail in the coffin of Kirby's relevance, to the…
denialism | January 28, 2008For the benefit of Teresa and her son, here's a description of a day in the life. This may not be all medstudents on the surgical rotation, but at the moment it's what I'm doing.
I wake up around 4AM, put on scrubs (usually, but on clinic day you dress nice), and go to work. I spend about an hour going over labs, checking vitals from overnight, in and outs as they say, and visiting with patients to ask them how their night was as well as performing a brief physical exam. I then round with my team for about half an hour, and for the patients I track, I try to present them to the residents…
neurotopia | January 23, 2008If you haven't checked out the DANA Foundation, well, you should. The DANA Foundation and DANA Alliance for Brain Initiatives are dedicated to providing up-to-date scientific information to the public, as well as supporting research and the arts. And they do a heck of a good job at laying out new findings in a very accessible fashion.
I wanted to take a quick moment to plug their book The DANA Guide to Brain Health: A practical family reference from medical experts. This book and CD-ROM, with over 100 scientists and clinicians contributing to the contents, is an excellent primer in a whole…
mementomori | January 21, 2008The New York Times has a story published last Friday about American men traveling to Mexico to receive a treatment for prostate cancer that is not approved in the United States. The article implies that this treatment is an unproven entity and may be unethical. I'm not so certain about this, so let's take a look.
The treatment is called High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound, or HIFU. The title of the story is:
"Despite Doubts, Cancer Therapy Draws Patients"
Doubts? Who's doubting the treatment - the doctors who perform it? The company who makes the product? The patients themselves? Of…
oracknows | January 21, 2008Along with Dr. R.W. and few others, I've made a bit of a name for myself in the medical blogosphere by bemoaning the infiltration of non-science- and non-evidence-based medicine into academia. It's not a particularly popular viewpoint. The prevailing attitude seems to be: Why be so negative? It's all good. Moreover, with a credulous media eager to publish stories of "healing" and "humanistic" medicine, those of us who remain skeptical of applying unproven and/or untested remedies in an academic setting, thus giving them the imprimatur of academic medicine and the respect associated with it,…
terrasig | January 18, 2008Erleichda is the nom de plume of a guest blogger who contributes regularly to The Friday Fermentable columns. The act of contributing a column periodically on the topic of wine is consistent with the philosophy embodied in his pseudonym, i.e., to "lighten up" (from 'Jitterbug Perfume' by Tom Robbins).
Erleichda holds a PhD in microbiology following a baccalaureate in the same discipline. Post-doctoral training was received in tumor immunology and virology. While initial employment involved transplantation immunology research for a few years, a subsequent job at a research institute focused…
palmd | January 18, 2008I am often asked my opinion of chiropractic care. My usual answer (based on evidence) is that it can be somewhat helpful in the treatment of low back pain. That's it. Any further claims are complete and utter bullshit. Many chiropractors practice ethically, and recognize the correct scope of their abilities...many do not.
Adapted from RationalWiki
Chiropractic is the theory and practice of correction of "vertebral subluxation processes" to treat and cure disease. It was developed in the late 19th century, just before the development of modern medical education in the United States.…
omnibrain | January 18, 2008Don't play any of the embedded videos if you've ever had a seizure.
Now that we're done with the warning...
We've all heard of the Pokemon incident in Japan where nearly 700 school aged children were admitted to the hospital with "convulsions, vomiting, irritated eyes and other symptoms" common to epilepsy. This lead to a number of government investigations and media companies searching their offerings to determine whether any of their shows had similar scenes that might induce photosensitive epilepsy. According to a CNN report of the incidents:
Dr. Yukio Fukuyama, a juvenile epilepsy…
sb admin | January 17, 2008Howard A. Heit, MD and a pain management specialist at Georgetown University offers an informed perspective on "painkiller abuse" among coal miners, in response to the Washington Post's article "A Dark Addiction."Â He writes:
"I don't believe the majority of these miners have the disease of addiction....[instead they] are seeking medications appropriately or inappropriately as a result of significant undertreatment of pain."
Dr. Heit's letter to the editor reads:
 "'A Dark Addicition' [front page, Jan 13] documented the experience of miners in western Virginia who work under conditions…
denialism | January 17, 2008Despite the best attempts of the New York Times Wellness Blog to get me fired, I'm still here and doing fine. Somehow a post about how impressed I was with surgery, the professionals that practice it, and how many of my preconceptions about surgeons were incorrect, got all turned around into some "peak behind the curtain" into the secrets of the medical profession. This is terribly absurd and the article made a hash out of what I was trying to say. I was trying to relate some of the shock one experiences going from an academic setting into a clinical one for the first time, as a reminder…
grrlscientist | January 16, 2008So where have I been all day? In short, I wasted a perfectly good day of internet connectivity so I could go to the hospital -- not as a patient nor as an emergency arrival, although the day was such an abortion that it is surprising that I didn't end up in the psych ER after all was said and done. No, I was there for just one reason: to see my psychiatrist who would then refill my prescription.
This is how my day went.
0600: I am awake, listening to NPR. It's dark. My parrot pals are still asleep.
0700: Get up, take a shower, wash my hair, and feed my birds their gourmet meals of fruits,…
tsmith | January 16, 2008 Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has taken up residence in sport teams, prisons, schools, the military, and even swine. A new article in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that, at least in Boston and San Francisco, it's also causing a lot of infections in men who have sex with men; more after the jump.
To examine this, the authors looked at MRSA infections from a variety of health care settings: medical centers, community health clinics, HIV clinics, and emergency rooms. These were examined in separate analyses. For example, for the medical centers they looked at…
bushwells | January 16, 2008Judah Folkman, a most extraordinary scientist, died Monday at age 74. Orac (Respectful Insolence) posted a fitting tribute which I highly recommend. See also Alex's (Daily Transcript) entry and this New York Times article.
Thanks to the intricate academic vascular network between Harvard and Boston biotech, Folkman visited the company in Cambridge MA for which I previously worked. His seminar enthralled us and exemplified his ability to communicate so effectively. Folkman's persistent championship of the anti-angiogenic drugs born of his research illustrates his belief in his work and…
oracknows | January 15, 2008Perusing the skeptical medical blogosphere, I came across some rather amusing, but nonetheless informative, videos from the 1950s about medical quackery. There are a number of aspects of these videos that are a bit unsettling to modern viewers, such as the "doctor knows best" paternalism, naïve faith in the AMA and other medical organizations, the utter seriousness, the cheesy reading of lines, and a rah-rah cheerleading for science and technology über alles. On the other hand, as Steve Novella points out, there was a refreshing directness about how the government viewed dubious medical…
oracknows | January 14, 2008Sadly, today would have been the day that the new season of 24 would have started. Even though after the first five or six episodes last season stunk bad enough to knock the proverbial buzzard off a manure wagon, I'm still a sucker for the show and had high hopes that it could stage a turnaround this season. Unfortunately, the writer strike intervened. That doesn't mean, however, that we bereft 24 fans can't still have some fun. If Flying Spaghetti Monster worshipers can have Talk Like A Pirate Day, why can't we have Talk Like Jack Bauer Day? The rules are easy, and here are some samples:
Co-…
oracknows | January 14, 2008I'd be remiss if I didn't note that Mark Hoofnagle of denialism.com has exited the rarified (and much less stressful world) of the laboratory and has dived headlong right into the clinic again, starting out with his surgery rotation.
As an old geezer (OK, middle-aged; it just feels old when each year's crop of new interns looks younger and younger), I'm amazed that he has any time at all to blog. Certainly, back in the day when giants walked the earth, such blogging would have been unlikely at best. It must be the 80 hour work week. In any case, he's made some observations about surgery, many…
tsmith | January 14, 2008Every year, the folks over at Medgadget.com host the Medical Weblog Awards. I've been nominated a few times, and even did OK in the best new blog category a few years back. This year, I'm apparently nominated in the Best Clinical Weblog category--which, honestly, I don't think I fit into. So I won't ask for your votes here, but I'll suggest you check out some of the other fine blogs that are nominated, and the others that are nominated for all the other awards (including fellow Scienceblogger Orac). If you see something you like, pass along a vote or two.
j7uy5 | January 14, 2008
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gregladen | January 12, 2008Accepting his 2005 TED Prize, inventor Robert Fischell makes three wishes: redesigning a portable migraine treatment, finding new cures for clinical depression, and reforming the medical malpractice system. He also shares three new inventions that could improve the lives of millions: His Angel Med Guardian System -- a pacemaker-sized device wired into the heart -- detects an elevation in the electric signal of the heart, the first sign of a heart attack. His transcranial magnetic stimulator treats migraines with a magnetic pulse. Finally, the Neuropace prevents epileptic seizures by…